Advances in communication infrastructures and devices have turned standard communication devices into valuable tools. People communicate with each other, and with other electronic devices, over networks ranging from Local Area Networks (LANs) to wide reaching Global Area Networks (GANs) such as the Internet. Wireless communications devices such as mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and the like are often designed to interface with such networks as well as with their local surroundings using short-range wireless technologies.
Today, such wireless devices are being used for a variety of different types of communication, as well as the creation of original content. For example, current and anticipated mobile phone technologies have transformed wireless devices into powerful tools capable of capturing and communicating voice, data, images, video, and other multimedia content. Mobile phones, at one time solely a voice communication tool, now often include digital photographic, video, and audio recording capabilities along with network communication capabilities such as e-mail and World Wide Web browsing.
Digital content, such as still pictures, audio, video and other multimedia, can be captured and transmitted via these communications devices and infrastructures. It is often desirable to visually include a date or time stamp on such content, as it can help the content owner in various ways. More particularly, current cameras utilizing film-based technology often include a date stamp exposed near an edge of the photograph. However, any such information provided relates to the content itself, and does not take into account other related and potentially valuable information.
For example, people may want to know who or what was present when some content was created. Currently, such information is recorded manually. For example, photographs taken by professional photographers are often painstakingly associated with the subjects of the photograph, often by interviewing each subject within the photograph for information such as name, address, and the like. The information may be written on the back of the developed photograph.
With the rapid expansion of systems and devices available for content creation, there is a need for determining and organizing attendance information as it relates to the creation of content. The present invention addresses these and other problems of the prior art, and offers a variety of advantages over the prior art.